Judicial Misconduct

Attorney Gary Dubin was in a Honolulu hospital, sedated and suffering from depression after the death of his son, when U.S. District Judge Manuel L. Real had him handcuffed and taken to court -- still in his hospital gown -- to answer charges of failing to file tax returns. Real allowed him to send for clothes but refused to postpone the hearing, recalled Dubin, who had to defend himself in a medicated fog without his case files. Judged guilty by Real after a two-day bench trial, Dubin spent 19 1/2 months in federal prison, while his home went into foreclosure and his credit was ruined by identity thieves.

U.S. District Court Judge Manuel L. Real, who has endured a rare public censure by the federal judiciary, the threat of impeachment and removal from several cases for questionable conduct, now faces demands to account for $5 million or more in apparently missing trust funds. Lawyers for rival Filipino groups laying claim to the seized assets of late Philippines Dictator Ferdinand Marcos have petitioned a federal appeals court to demand that Real provide a detailed accounting of $35.

Roman Polanski rushed up to the British Airways counter at LAX in late January 1978 with an American Express card and an urgent desire to get out of town. He bought the last seat on an overnight flight to London and 15 minutes later, he wrote in his autobiography, watched Los Angeles gradually disappear out a jet window. The criminal case that Polanski was fleeing never went away, as his recent arrest in Zurich attests. But how a Los Angeles court would restart the case if Switzerland extradites the film director, 76, is a question complicated by the passage of decades and recent allegations of judicial misconduct.

Homestore Inc.'s former chief executive, Stuart Wolff, won a reversal of his conviction for directing a $67-million fraud at the online home-listings company because of a conflict by the trial judge. The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco threw out Wolff's conviction and 15-year prison sentence Monday, ruling that U.S. District Judge Percy Anderson, who owned stock in Time Warner Inc.'s America Online unit, should have removed himself from the case.

A federal judge in Los Angeles who was reprimanded for official misconduct last year could face a harsher punishment -- or be cleared of the charges altogether -- after a ruling this week by a panel of fellow judges. The ruling by the Judicial Conference Committee on Judicial Conduct and Disability in Washington, D.C., came in the case of U.S. District Court Judge Manuel L. Real.

The judge presiding over the death penalty case of a man accused in a notorious courthouse shooting stepped down Wednesday after being quoted in a magazine article as having said of the defendant, "Everyone in the world knows he did it." Superior Court Judge Hilton Fuller Jr. told local media outlets Tuesday that he did not recall making the statement to a reporter for the New Yorker magazine.

It seemed like a gift from heaven in a country where very little is free. When security guard Xu Ting went to an ATM in the southern city of Guangzhou on a Friday night in the spring of 2006 and withdrew $140, he noticed that it only deducted 14 cents from his account. Over the next eight hours, he made 170 more withdrawals, pocketing upward of $24,000.

If the allegations against Elizabeth Halverson are true, then the judge often handled her staff with the temperament of a toddler. Her former bailiff said he was forced to heat and serve her lunch, check the temperature of her ice water, brush lint from her robe, help her put on her shoes, massage her neck and cover her with a blanket before her nap. An assistant said Halverson, of the 8th Judicial District Court, made her answer questions -- under oath -- about courthouse gossip.

A judge hearing a war crimes case at Guantanamo Bay who publicly expressed frustration with military prosecutors' refusal to give evidence to the defense has been dismissed, tribunal officials confirmed Friday. Army Col. Peter Brownback III was presiding over the case of Canadian detainee Omar Khadr. Marine Col.

A federal judge who acknowledged maintaining his own publicly accessible website featuring sexually explicit photos and videos Thursday called for an investigation of his own conduct. Alex Kozinski, 57, chief judge of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, asked a court ethics panel to initiate the proceedings after The Times reported Wednesday that the judge had posted lewd photos and videos on his personal website.